


Are we the same, how does it feel

by lloydsglasses



Series: all ur favs are ace [8]
Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Aromantic, Asexual Awareness Week, Asexual Character, Gen, LGBTQ Character, Queer Themes, Sexual Identity, Trans Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-19
Updated: 2015-10-19
Packaged: 2018-04-27 03:57:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,561
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5032834
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lloydsglasses/pseuds/lloydsglasses
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The thing is, Daisy doesn’t think she even wants to have sex in the first place.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Are we the same, how does it feel

The meeting is in a private room next to the Students’ Union Bar. Daisy is nervous as she walks in, but once she finds that the room contains two tables pushed together with a large pink, blue and white flag draped artfully across them, and a small group of people sat around eating cake and drinking coffee – one of whom immediately waves at her and cheerfully says, ‘Welcome to Trans Café!’ – she manages to relax a little. They do a round of names and pronouns after she joins them, and Daisy finds herself sitting next to a person called Trip (he/him) on her left and Bobbi (she/her) on her right. She’d be ashamed to admit it, but she spends a couple of minutes subtly trying to figure out whether Bobbi is actually trans, or if she’s just a facilitator from the SU; it becomes pretty obvious that she _is_ trans when Bobbi starts telling an anecdote about her last trip to a Gender Identity Clinic. Daisy sort of wants to cry and gush at her simultaneously, because Bobbi might be one of the most beautiful women she’s ever seen and Daisy wishes that she were able to look so flawlessly feminine.

Her own insecurities aside, it’s reassuring to be sat here with them, because even if these are the only eight people like her in the entire university that’s still eight more than she’s ever met before. She discovers that there are two other first years in the group Jemma (they/them) and Leo (he/him), that Trip is the trans rep on the LGBT+ Students’ Network and if she has any issues with the uni she should talk to him, and that Bobbi is a post-grad who has a very on-again, off-again relationship with her boyfriend.

“It suits us both,” Bobbi says. “We’d probably get sick of one another otherwise.”

“Is he trans as well?” asks Daisy, tentatively.

“Hell no,” Bobbi laughs. “He was one of those straight, cis guys who didn’t even know what transgender meant until his girlfriend told him she had a penis.”

Daisy laughs at that, though some of her hesitation must show on her face because Bobbi tilts her head curiously and raises her eyebrows.

“Is he…” Daisy starts. “I mean, is he okay with you being…” She trails off again, flapping a hand at Bobbi and then feeling intensely embarrassed about the gesture.

Bobbi doesn’t seem to mind. “Oh yeah, he’s fine now. It took a little while I guess, but he’s a pretty laid back guy.” She grins wickedly. “It probably helps that the sex is fantastic.”

Daisy can’t think of anything to say to that. Her cheeks feel heated.

“Don’t worry about it, hun,” says Bobbi reassuringly, when Daisy stays quiet. “Sex doesn’t always have to be difficult, just because you’re trans. One day you’ll find someone who accepts you exactly as you are.”

Daisy swallows and smiles at her politely.

She heads back to her room once the meeting is done, happy and yet somehow not. There are no words to describe how utterly lovely it had been to meet other transgender people for the first time, but she keeps playing Bobbi’s words over and over in her head and she can’t shake the feeling that there’s something wrong with them.

Because the thing is, Daisy doesn’t think she even wants to have sex in the first place.

She’d sort of assumed that was just part of being trans; after all, why would you want to let another person see your naked body when that naked body doesn’t look anything like you? But it’s clear that Bobbi doesn’t feel the same as her, and Trip had seemed to agree as well.

“I might be uncomfortable with my own body,” he said at one point, “But I’ve had it for twenty-two years now. I sure as hell know how to use it!”

Daisy doesn’t feel like that at all. She mostly feels confused, because she thought this was something that the Trans Café group would understand and it seems like she was wrong about that. She isn’t sure anymore whether this is really something trans related or if it’s something else, which is so unfair because Daisy had hoped she was finally at a point in her life where she’d managed to figure things out. 

She winds up calling Phil in the end, because it’s becoming hard to stop thinking about it and he’s always been good at calming her down. It’s Sunday anyway, so he’s due a phone call. She nearly blurts it all out as soon as he picks up, because confiding in him is always so easy; he isn’t actually her dad – and calling him that would feel a bit weird – but he’s the one who took care of her when there was no one left to turn to, and when she confessed that she wanted to be called Daisy instead of Scott he’d been even more supportive than she dared to hope (though admittedly, very slow to adjust to the new name and pronoun). Daisy loves him as fiercely as she thinks she would her own father, but somehow that’s still not enough to stop her from asking Phil about his day rather than telling him about her own.

It isn’t until they’ve been chatting for about twenty minutes that something occurs to her.

“Hey Phil, how come you never got married?”

There’s a pause on the other end as Phil presumably digests the sudden change in topic. “Well, I guess I never wanted to,” he says eventually.

“But what about like, dating or something? You’ve never introduced me to any–” Daisy suddenly realises she has no idea which gender or genders might apply to the end of that sentence. “– _significant others_ or anything like that.”

Phil laughs. “Between you and work that’s not really something I had time for, is it?”

She knows literally nothing about Phil’s job except that it involves wearing suits, he sometimes has to work very long hours, and his boss is a really severe-looking guy with an eye-patch. (Part of Daisy is convinced that he’s a CIA agent or a spy or something, but the other part of her knows he’s nowhere near cool enough for a job like that.)

“Most people usually make time,” she says, because he hasn’t really given her an answer.

“It’s not really my kind of thing, to be honest.”

“What, any of it?”

“Sure. Sex, romance, relationships… I’m just not particularly interested.” He sounds so matter of fact, like that’s just the way things are and there’s nothing odd about it.

“Oh,” says Daisy, then immediately falls silent, finding that her mind has gone curiously blank for the second time that day.

“Daisy?” Phil prompts after a moment, and her stomach lurches happily like it always does when he gets her name right.

“Yeah, I’m here,” she says. “I’m just…” Daisy trails off, not really knowing how she’s supposed to talk about this, or if she even wants to. “I guess I just wasn’t expecting you to say that.”

Phil pauses. “You weren’t planning on setting me up with someone, were you?” He sounds so genuinely horrified by the idea that Daisy has to laugh.

“No, nothing like that,” she says, still chuckling. “Besides, I think Lola would get jealous.”

He laughs along with her, and the conversation moves on to Phil’s beloved Chevrolet before they hang up for the night. Afterwards Daisy lies back on her bed and stares up at the ceiling, wondering if she should have tried to talk about it after all. She wonders about Phil too, about whether he finds the notion of having sex as distasteful as she does, or if he was ever frightened by the idea that he might be the only person in the world to feel that way.

It’s comforting somehow, to think that Phil might once have been just as confused as she feels right now. It’s even more comforting to hear that she’s not the only person who isn’t interested in having sex, even if it’s not a ‘trans thing’ like she originally thought it could be. Maybe it’s just a ‘Daisy-and-Phil thing’ instead; she thinks about it for a moment, and decides she’d probably be okay if that were the case.

Grabbing her phone again, she shoots off a text to Phil that says _You’re really cool, you know that?_ before rolling over pick up her laptop. It’s tempting to try looking things up – to see if there are any words or labels for this kind of thing – but Daisy wants to sleep at some point tonight so she clicks on to Netflix instead and searches for something goofy and distracting.

It’s not so bad anyway, she supposes as she settles back into her pillows, to not understand exactly how she works; there’ll be time to figure it out tomorrow, or the day after, or even the day after that. Besides, it’s been a good afternoon - it isn’t every day she gets the chance to meet people that are like her, and even if they turned out not to be _exactly_ like her, well… It turns out Phil might be like her too, though in a slightly different way.

Whatever the case, Daisy isn’t alone anymore and that’s what really matters.

**Author's Note:**

> So I was hoping to post the second part of [Though far away we're still the same](http://archiveofourown.org/works/4806590/chapters/11003129) for Asexual Awareness Week, but when it became clear that it wasn't going to be finished on time I wrote this instead. Also, I've been desperate to write a trans!Daisy fic since the start of series 3. 
> 
> Come say hi on [tumblr.](http://lloydsglasses.tumblr.com) :)


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